Intraoperative physiological monitoring is a continually evolving field that aims to localize, monitor and preserve the structural integrity of structures during surgery or other invasive procedures. In some procedures, tactile and acoustic feedback may be provided by instruments used within spinal fusion procedures to alert surgeons to conditions during a procedure. For example, in some procedures, tactile and acoustic feedback may be acquired using pedicle probes and ball tip feelers. Generally, such feedback may be used to determine, for example, whether or not a process of access has breached the pedicle, or if a pedicle remains intact.
In a spinal fusion procedure, instruments currently provide tactile and acoustic feedback to surgeons by virtue of the interaction between the instrument's distal end and a patient's tissue. Instruments used to remove disc material and cartilage from the interbody space make a unique sound when the distal end of the instrument is scraped against the endplate bone surface. These instruments generally include rasps, rakes, curettes, shavers, Cobb Elevators, KerrisionRongeur, ronguer, trials, and the like.
Hearing and feeling these subtle signals made by the distal end of the instruments accurately may take significant training and experience of the surgeon. Acoustic signals provide the added challenge in a noisy operating environment. As such, surgeons have been known to move their head closer to an open wound in order to hear such sounds potentially compromising the surgical environment.